Phrases and sayings you just don't understand

[Remieatscake]

Such as:

'Life isn't a bed of roses you know''
Well, yes I think it is really because roses have thorns - the tough bits of life but they also have the beautiful petals of the flower - the good parts of life...overly simplistic but you get my drift.....

''Oh, I slept like a baby'' - surely this is meant to mean I slept badly but people seem to say it wen they have slept well. Not a mum (yet) but I am an overnight nanny amongst other things so know that babies do not generally sleep well!

Will think of some more I'm sure but in the mean time anyone else think of sayings that don't really make sense?

"Cheap at half the price"

If it's cheap at half the price, it's not cheap at full price!

Horses for courses

Wtf does that phrase mean

Different horses are suited to/perform better on different racecourses.

So different people prefer/are suited to different things.

'It'll be in the last place you look.' Should be
“it’ll be in the last place you’d think to look”

The exception that proves the rule...... here goes... imagine I say I only like/drink Yorkshire tea..... then one day someone offers me a cup of pg tips and I drink it and think (to myself) this isn't really that good, then I have made an exception to the rule "I only like Yorkshire tea" and proved that it is in fact correct (other brands of tea do exist)!

My gran used to say I looked like a bissom (Besom) in a fit if I was untidy . I know that the first part refers to a broom but why in a fit.

I also hat people who say that treatment etc could save their life, or they will die if they don't do something. Surely you're postponing death not stopping it.

"cheap at half the price...". Well... Yeah?

Also... Jump the gun and stick to your guns, I just don't get it?

“Who’s she, the cats mother?” is both annoying and nonsensical

I haven't RTFT but I really don't get "There's more than one way to skin a cat".

What the actual fuck? Who skins cats? It's such a weird thing to say.

What is piffy and why in some places is it on egg and in others on a rock bun?

“Jump the gun” Must surely be to go before the starters pistol in a race?

“Who’s she, the cats mother?” is both annoying and nonsensical

It is neither annoying nor nonsensical. The point of it is that it is extremely rude to refer to another person as "she", in the presence of that person. Eg"I didn't break it, she did

Unless you do require to refer to a female cat, you shouldn't use it.

I'd always understood 'no better than she should be' as being a woman of sexually questionable morals. But even with the knowledge of what it means in context, it still makes no linguistic sense to me whatsoever!

I may well go to my grave making that point.

I love the phrases the cat's pyjamas, the bees' knees and the cat's whiskers all meaning something excellent and/or just right.

I know they were invented in the 1920s Jazz age and there are explanations of them which don't rely on a literal meaning but I much prefer to think of "cat's pyjamas" and "bees' knees" literally.

*"Cheap at half the price"

If it's cheap at half the price, it's not cheap at full price!*

I think that it refers to the "price" of cheap? So for instance, if I wanted to buy a cheap pen, and I think cheap is £1 and the pen costs me 50p, it's half the price of what "cheap" is to me? A really laboured way of saying it, though!

You can tell the age (and therefore value) of a horse from its teeth. the older a horse gets, the more its gums recede, same for humans - hence "long in the tooth" to mean old.

A rule is something that usually happens. Let's say as a rule I go to church every Sunday. When I broke my leg and didn't go that was the exception that proved that this was a rule. If there was no exceptions to something it would be a law that it happened not merely a general rule.

No, "prove" in this context has the old meaning, to test. So if you say "I always go to church on a Sunday, no matter what", someone will say "ah, but what if you'd broken your leg" (an exceptional circumstance), to test whether the rule always holds. Nowadays, "prove" has moved its meaning from "test" to "demonstrate that this is so".

'Just giving you a heads up'. No idea why it means what it does.

"Cheap at half the price"

I thought "cheap" meant as in "cheap and nasty"/ "tacky"/

So if whatever it is costs £1 even at 50p would still be cheap and nasty. There seems to be various interpretations of it.

The phrase isn't "cheap at half the price" but "cheap at twice the price". But for some reason most people get it wrong.

How about a song lyric...."I shot the sheriff, but I didn't shoot the deputy". Errrr....it's not the strongest case for the defence I've ever heard. Given that shooting the sheriff is more serious.

It's like saying "ok, I was 5 times over the drink drive limit, but I wasn't doing 32mph in a 30.

Yes, but it's two different crimes- and sentences! If I'm caught red-handed shooting the sheriff, and they accuse me of shooting the deputy, which I didn't do, I'm not going to admit to it just because they have proof regarding the sheriff.

“It’s like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs”

Wtf? Why would your grandmother (or anyone else for that matter) want to suck eggs? And what does it actually mean?

Haven’t read full thread so sorry if this has come up

The phrase isn't "cheap at half the price" but "cheap at twice the price". But for some reason most people get it wrong

That isn't correct. They are 2 separate phrases.

"Cheap at twice the price" is clear "cheap at half the price" is a play on that but it is open to different interpretations.

I have read that "cheap at half price" was used by market traders in a jokey way to attract attention to their stalls.

My bad. It doesn't make sense to me.

I agree with some of these - why would you want to skin a cat or get your grandmother sucking eggs!

A rule is something that usually happens. Let's say as a rule I go to church every Sunday. When I broke my leg and didn't go that was the exception that proved that this was a rule. If there was no exceptions to something it would be a law that it happened not merely a general rule.

This is an example of flawed logic and sloppy thinking that really irritates me. You can't prove the soundness of a rule by citing an example where the rule doesn't work. Multiple exceptions to a rule generally prove nothing except that the rule is a bit shit.

So to take this example, not going to church one Sunday proves that you go to church every Sunday. But if you get really ill and can't go, so you don't go to church on Sunday for months, then it's not an exception any more so you have to prove that you don't go to church on Sunday any more by the exception when your neighbour gave you a lift on Easter Sunday and you did make it to church.

Yeah, that's logical and consistent thinking all right. The slippery definition of exception and rule in one closed circular argument is pure political obfuscation, and well worth watching out for as a way to mess with your head. See Orwell.

It's important to note, as a PP has done, that the above nonsense hinges on the 180 degree change in the meaning of the word 'prove'.

fighting fire with fire I have have always assumed as a PP said that this referred to when firefighters carry out a controlled burn to clear a strip of land to prevent a wildfire spreading beyond that strip. It’s using something you are struggling against/fighting with to work for you.

i love you to the moon and back is the last line of the children’s book ‘Guess how much I love you* where little nutbrown hare is telling big nutbrown hare how much he loves him and each time he picks something bigger / further away and bug nutbrown hare picks something still further until at last he’s going to sleep he spots the moon and says ‘I love you all the way to the moon’ as he falls asleep big nutbrown hare says ‘I love you all the way to the moon and back’.